Through this place of love move (with brightness of peace) all places. –E. E. Cummings

Friday, March 9, 2018

journey of the breath

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Of the two spoiled, barn-sour geldingswe owned that year, it was Red—skittish and prone to explodeeven at fourteen years—who'd let mehold my face to his own: the massive labyrinthinecaverns of the nostrils, the broad plainup the head to the eyes.

He'd let me stroke his coarse chin whiskers and takehis soft meaty underlipin my hands, press my man's carnivorouskiss to his grass-nipping under half of one,just so that I could smellthe long way his breath had come from the rainand the sun, the lungs and the heart, from a world that meant no harm.